My second letter to Susan
Saturday 9.20am
Yesterday was a day of activity and walking. Lisbon is a very hilly city, but its pavements are a thing of beauty.
With all the walking one of my feet almost dropped off. Certainly my shoes are suffering. You may have noticed that I have adopted a lace-up suede brothel-keeper type shoe, which others might unkindly call a cheap trainer. Whatever, they are falling to pieces – which may be due to my putting them on and off without undoing the laces. What did our mothers always tell us? Apart from warning us that if we went out with wet hair we would have cranial arthritis in old age. So many things I should have listened to.
2 things of note happened yesterday:
- A little old lady came cackling out of a café. She was about 80, about 4’ tall and she had a stick. She shouted to us. She wanted help getting down the kerb. She knew no English and my Portuguese ‘I’d like a white coffee, por favor’ did not fit the bill. She clutched my arm and kept laughing. As did 2 women who worked in the café who came out for a smoke. We got down the kerb then went round the corner and got up on the pavement (such as it was – all stony cobbles) again. We double kissed goodbye and she patted my face. She may have invited us to her house – which the guide book assures us happens – but how could I tell?
- We went on a tour bus, around the city. We eschewed tram 28 which is regarded as a must do – every one which passed us was full, with people standing in the aisles.
On our big yellow bus we got to sit at the front (yes, almost driving the bus ourselves) with our earphones in and a great view of the town and its hills, its curves and its fantastic architecture.
I knew so little about Portuguese history: Vasco da Gama – I knew the name, but did I know he was the first person (with his crew, obviously) to sail directly from Europe to India? No. I knew little of Portugal’s extraordinary colonial past, nor the 1755 earthquake which destroyed much of Lisbon. And we learned a little about the rise of Salazar, from his time as a 21 year old in 1910 watching the revolution which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy to his time as a dictator, side by side with Franco’s Spain, until the end of his rule in 1968. We passed the 25 April bridge, renamed to commemorate the end of the dictatorship (Estado Novo) in April 1974. It is apparently the 32nd largest suspension bridge in the world and crosses the River Tagus, from Lisbon to the municipality of Almada on the south bank of the river.
Also in the Belem area is the Monument to the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos) originally built for the 1940 World Fair held in Lisbon. A wonderful stirring, almost brutalist, piece of sculpture.
And we saw a fashion shoot as our bus was stuck in a traffic jam for 10 minutes.
I’ve started reading A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson so it’s quite good to know some of the areas – Belem, Cais do Sodre, Avenida da Liberdade. And having found the language almost impenetrable, with the strangeness of the ‘ow’ and the ‘sh’ sounds, it feels very good to be able to ask for uma meia de leite (a coffee with milk, literally ‘a half of milk’) and um garoto (a small white coffee).
And everyone is so pleased when you try to speak Portuguese that people smile and correct your pronunciation till you get it right.
For lunch we went to the Time Out market, so named because it was an idea of a former Time Out travel writer from Lisbon, who saw a crumbling market and had an idea. It even bears the Time Out logo. It sells fruit, vegetables, and fish, but it also has many little booths (some run by Michelin star chefs) where you buy take-away/fast food and then sit at long tables in the middle of the vast hall, to eat. We had salt cod fritters and a glass of cold white wine each.
Then more walking. Rua do Arsenal, a road which leads off the Praca do Comercio, is famous for its salt cod shops. Salt cod (bacalhau), like the fritters we had for lunch, is a local delicacy, so old shops with a deep musty smell of salt cod rub shoulders with tourist shops selling all sorts of items with a yellow tram logo – fridge-magnets, towels, tea towels, pots, plates.
Later we had a glass of Mateus Rosé in an old pretty hotel (Browns) bar called – we later learned – the Browns Burger Bar. Everyone else was eating burger and chips. It reduced the sense of sophistication.
Now we are striding out again, feet throbbing in anticipation.
Liz x
